Flag On The Play: One of the most legendary plays in Alabama history technically never existed. As big underdogs, the Tide ended Miami’s 29-game winning streak in the ’92 season national title game in part due to “The Strip.” Miami receiver Lamar Thomas before the game had planted his two championship rings on either side of a microphone and declared the third “will be icing on the cake.” He said the SEC wasn’t what it once was, and questioned the manhood of Alabama’s defensive backs. A member of Miami’s 400-meter relay team in track, after a poor start to the game, Thomas appeared poised to burst to an 89-yard touchdown catch. Then
George Teague walked him down from behind and stripped the ball, a remarkable blur of speed and coordination. An offside penalty negated the play, but the Tide rolled and made Thomas eat his words.
110/2: Alabama has won football games scoring both of those figures. The Tide beat Marion Military by a score of 110-0 on Sept. 30, 1922, and knocked off former SEC member Sewanee by a score of 2-0 on Oct. 23, 1926.
8,969: Career passing yards for AJ McCarron, the winningest quarterback in Alabama history. McCarron secured two national championships as a starter and won 36 games, one more than Jay Barker for most all-time. At .934, Barker has a slightly better career winning percentage than McCarron, who was 36-4 as a starter (.900).
An Elephant Story: The 1930 Alabama team coached by Wallace Wade went 10-0 with eight shutouts. According to the Paul W. Bryant Museum, sports writer Everett Strupper of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
wrote a long soliloquy on the size of the Alabama players upon witnessing a game against Mississippi, after which writers referred to the team as the Red Elephants:
“At the end of the quarter, the earth started to tremble, there was a distant rumble that continued to grow. Some excited fan in the stands bellowed, ‘Hold your horses, the elephants are coming,’ and out stamped this Alabama varsity. It was the first time that I had seen it and the size of the entire eleven nearly knocked me cold, men that I had seen play last year looking like they had nearly doubled in size.”
Bear Bryant Like Pete Rose?: The legendary Alabama coach was just “the other end” opposite Don Hutson in the 1934 Rose Bowl as the Tide upset Stanford. Later, Bryant admitted he and some teammates had pooled together about $5 and
bet on themselves as underdogs, making about $1 each. It wasn’t the only sneaky thing Bryant did — he married Mary Harmon Black in 1935 without telling anyone, because he feared coach Frank Thomas would yank his scholarship.